I Got Out. So Why Am I Falling Apart
I keep changing my mind.
Every day it’s a different version of my life.
One day I’m building something.
The next day I’m starting over.
The next day I’m convinced I picked the wrong direction entirely.
I can feel how fast I’m switching.
I can’t tell which one is real.
There are too many options.
That’s the part I didn’t expect.
I thought the problem would be figuring out what I believed.
I didn’t think the problem would be having nothing to push against.
I sit down to decide what to work on and everything feels equally possible.
And equally wrong.
There’s no way to rank it.
No way to tell which one matters more.
No way to know what I’m supposed to be doing.
And underneath that, there’s this pressure about time.
Like I already used too much of it.
Like I don’t have enough left to figure it out slowly.
Like whatever I choose needs to be the right thing immediately.
So I try to decide faster.
Which makes it worse.
I change directions.
Again.
All of this is happening inside a house full of people who are also in the middle of their own version of this.
Different details.
Same instability.
Things are shifting at the same time.
Nothing is landing at the same time.
I thought I would feel better.
That part felt obvious.
You get out.
You stop doing the things you didn’t want to do.
You stop answering to something that never felt fully yours.
You get your time back.
Your money back.
Your body back.
Your choices back.
And for a minute, that’s true.
And then something else shows up.
The laundry sits.
Decisions get harder.
Simple things take longer.
You stand in the kitchen and cannot answer a basic question like what do you want.
Not what should you want.
Not what makes sense.
What do you actually want.
There isn’t an answer.
I don’t have a framework for choosing.
I only have options.
Every option feels like it matters too much.
And not at all.
At the same time.
I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing.
Some piece that would make this easier.
Some way other people are sorting this that I never learned.
Because it feels like I should be able to do this.
There’s nothing stopping me.
No one is telling me no.
No one is setting limits.
No one is deciding for me.
And still.
I can’t get traction.
There is a part of this that didn’t start when I left.
It just became visible then.
For a long time, I didn’t have to decide like this.
There were right answers.
There were next steps.
There were expectations that filled in the gaps when I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t have to build a system for choosing.
I stepped into one that was already built.
Now there isn’t one.
So everything is a decision.
Everything is a direction.
Everything is something I could build.
And I don’t know how to sort any of it.
I can feel my brain trying to recreate something.
Some kind of structure.
Some way to narrow it down.
But it doesn’t hold.
It keeps slipping.
So I change directions again.
I don’t think I expected this part.
Not the intensity of it.
Not the way it shows up in things that should be simple.
Not the way it spreads into everything.
It’s not just big decisions.
It’s all of them.
What to work on.
What to prioritize.
What matters.
What counts as enough.
What direction I’m even moving in.
I keep looking for something to anchor to.
And finding nothing solid.
It’s not that there’s nothing there.
It’s that I don’t know how to use it.
So I keep moving.
Switching.
Starting.
Stopping.
If this feels familiar, you’re not the only one.
A lot of us got out and then ran into something no one warned us about.
Not grief.
Not doubt.
The collapse that happens after the structure is gone.
I’m hosting a free workshop where I walk through what’s actually happening here and what it looks like to start rebuilding without recreating control.
You can join here.
If you want to understand why this is happening before you try to fix it, start here.
This is so relatable. "My brain had been using Mormonism as an external scaffolding system for my executive function my whole life. . . . I don’t have a framework for choosing. I only have options."
This is just part of the reason I describe leaving Mormonism as "empowering and terrifying."
Add to this that we're not allowed to say we're struggling after we leave, because it will be attributed and blamed on our having left. "You did this to yourself. You left the path. You let go of the iron rod. You are being punished. You walked away from the Spirit." And that REALLY sucks.
the progression from "i got out" to "so why am i falling apart" maps something that almost every deconstruction narrative skips over - the part where freedom feels indistinguishable from paralysis. standing in the kitchen unable to answer "what do you want" - not what should you want, not what makes sense, what do you actually want - and having no answer. that's not indecision. that's the absence of a framework for choosing that was never needed because someone else's framework did the choosing. the repetition in this piece - switching, starting, stopping, switching again - performs the very experience it describes. and the final reframe is precise: this isn't grief or doubt. it's the collapse that happens after the structure is gone. nobody warns you about that part because from the outside it looks like freedom.